challenges as those posed by North Korea's nuclear program. If we at all times
keep in mind the centrality of our interdependence, we will be able to cope
with other contentious issues."
It would be hard put to find any responsible Chinese government official who
would describe China today as a revisionist power. Rather, China has been
trying to find a path to engage a largely capitalistic world without
compromising its socialist principles. It is reasonable to assume that with the
bankruptcy of the global
market economy, China, as with many other countries, even including the US, is
beginning to recognize the limits of the market economy to revert back to a
balanced application of institutional economics principles.
Brzezinski asserts that the shared grand goal is to expand bilateral
relationship "to widen and deepen our geostrategic cooperation, beyond the
immediate need for close collaboration in coping with the economic crisis." He
sees China as needing to be a direct participant in the US dialogue with Iran;
he wants close US-China consultations regarding India and Pakistan; and he
wants China to become actively involved in helping to resolve the
Israel-Palestinian conflict to reduce risk of a radicalized and unstable Middle
East.
He sees the need for US-China cooperation in dealing with climate change; in
exploring the possibility of creating a larger standby UN peacekeeping force
for deployment in failed states; in pursuing an international initiative
towards a global adoption of the zero-nuclear weapons option; and in
collaborating closely to expand the current Group of Eight leading industrial
nations to a G-14 or G-16, in order to widen the global circle of
decision-makers and to develop a more inclusive response to the economic
crisis.
Brzezinski sees the need for an informal G-2 composed of the US and China, a
comprehensive partnership paralleling US and Chinese relations with Europe and
Japan. Chinese and US top leaders "should therefore meet informally on a
regular schedule for personal in-depth discussions not just about our bilateral
relations but about the world in general."
Rejecting the neo-conservative foreign policy of George W Bush, Brzezinski sees
the Chinese emphasis on "harmony" as serving as a useful point of departure for
future US-Chinese summits. "In an era in which the risks of a massively
destructive 'clash of civilizations' are rising, the deliberate promotion of a
genuine conciliation of civilizations is urgently needed. It is a task that
[then] president-elect Barack Obama - who is a conciliator at heart - should
find congenial, and which President Hu Jintao - who devised the concept of 'a
harmonious world' - should welcome. It is a mission worthy of the two countries
with the most extraordinary potential for shaping our collective future."
Brzezinski is acknowledged as a key adviser to President Obama on foreign
policy during and since the presidential election, while he acted as foreign
policy advisor to Hillary Clinton during the primaries. Many analysts consider
Brzezinski as the spokesman for previously anti-Soviet, now anti-Russia hawk
faction in the US foreign policy establishment. His speech in Beijing was
addressed to Washington through talking to Beijing. The message is for the US
not to waste financial, political and military resources confronting a China
destined to process enormous and rising economic, political and military
strength and potentials that will surge further over time unstoppable.
US national interests globally would be better served by a strategy of making
friends with China by sharing power globally because eventually the US will
need the support of the world's most populous country to preserve and shore up
its own global dominance. By contrast, conflicts with China will drain US
capacity to maintain its global dominance.
Brzezinski's statement aims at preserving US dominance in an existing world
order that is facing fast and fundamental changes by drawing China into regions
previously beyond a weak modern China's sphere of influence. If adopted by the
Obama administration, a likely possibility for US foreign policy reflects an
increasing acceptance of a scenario of a future world described in Brzezinski's
1997 book, written six years after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, The
Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives: "A
geostrategic issue of crucial importance is posed by China's emergence as a
major power." (page 54) "China's growing economic presence in the region
[Central Asia] and its political stake in the area's independence are also
congruent with America's interests." (p149) "Potentially, the most dangerous
scenario [for the US] would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps
Iran, an 'anti-hegemonic' coalition united not by ideology but by complementary
grievances."
Brzezinski, the grand master of geopolitical chess, plots his strategy several
moves ahead of the game. Geopolitical pluralism must first be promoted to
defuse challenges to US superpower, followed by encouraging compatible key
partners to cooperate under US leadership, and finally the pragmatic sharing of
global geopolitical responsibility can be rewarded with a sharing of power. The
twin poles of this strategy are a united Europe in the West and strong China in
the East; with the problematic central regions stabilized within a new balance
of power.
With the idea of forming a G-2, Brzezinski concedes that the days are numbered
for a unipolar world order dominated by a single superpower that emerged after
the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The US, in view of the self-inflicted
damage to its freewheeling market economy that can be expected to leave the
country in a protracted depression, will need a trade partner with high growth
potential to absorb its overcapacity. China emerges in the 21st century as the
ideal candidate for the new ally with a special relationship with the US. From
the US security perspective, an alliance with China will spare the US from
again involving itself directly in a war in Asia, a role the US alliance with
Japan had repeatedly failed to accomplish. From the US economic perspective,
US-China economic interdependence has the potential of a win-win symbiosis.
Brzezinski anticipates that a G-2 would be more effective in dealing with
multilateral global issues than the G-5 (France, Germany, Italy, UK, US) or G-6
(G5+Japan) or G-7 (G6+Canada) or G8 (G7+ Russia) or even the G-20
(G7+developing countries including China).
Brzezinski's vision not shared by all in US
Brzezinski's vision of harmony with China is not shared by all in the US.
Within days after Hillary Clinton's maiden foreign visit to Beijing as
secretary of state, during which she declared US-China cooperation as
imperative for enhancing the national interests of both countries and for
pulling the world from the current financial crisis, the US Navy staged a
provocative intrusion into Chinese territorial waters by a US low-frequency
sonar surveillance ship near China's submarine base on Hainan Island in the
South China Sea, mapping deep-sea routes for submarines leaving and entering
their base. China claimed that the USNS Impeccable had sailed into the
country's 200-kilometer economic exclusion zone.
Press reports are suddenly appearing on computer hackers allegedly associated
with the governments of Russia and China having embedded software in the US
electricity grid and other infrastructure that could potentially disrupt
service or damage equipment, even though such concerns have been simmering for
years within government security establishment. Obama reportedly has started a
60-day review of all the nation's efforts at cyber security that was expected
to be completed by April 17.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu at a regular press conference on
April 8 denied China had any involvement with mapping or hacking into the US
electrical grid to leave behind software programs that could be used to disrupt
the system, noting that the White House had denied the media reports.
Meanwhile, the omnipotent US Navy appears to be helpless in dealing with a
handful of enterprising pirates hijacking US merchant ships for money of the
coast of Salia in the Gulf of Aden, inducing the New York Times to headline:
"Navy's Standoff with Pirates Shows Limits of Military Might". (See also
The war that may end the Age of Superpower, Asia Times Online, April 5,
2003.)
For the idea of G-2 to work, the US has to adjust fundamentally foreign policy
it has followed since the end of Word War II, away from neo-imperialism toward
Wilsonian/FDR liberalism, and give up its aim of peaceful evolution of Chinese
society towards market capitalism. A G-2 would have to be a leading force in
building a new world order of social justice and economic equity.
China not likely to play Brzezinski's new Great Game
The big question is whether China will play Brzezinski's geopolitical chess
game. There is a sizable pro-US faction in China's foreign policy establishment
who would welcome Brzezinski's proposal. Formal US recognition of great power
status for China would strengthen the influence of this pro-US faction in
internal Chinese politics and policy deliberation. Yet, not withstanding
Brzezinski's assertion, China is not a "revisionist" power, but a
non-expansionist revolutionary state aiming at restoring its natural historical
status as it was before the arrival of Western imperialism in Asia. China is
not interested in bringing back a pre-World War II world order of imperialist
exploitative expansion. China is not Japan, which as a defeated nation has been
willing to play the role of a submissive ally with a benevolent victor.
Chinese foreign policy legacy
The foreign policy of the People's Republic since its founding in 1949 has a
long legacy of nonalignment. Mao Zedong had made repeated overtures to
Washington for peaceful and friendly relations with the new socialist China but
such overtures were categorically rejected by a US caught up in anti-communist
phobia during the Cold War.
President Richard Nixon's opening to the China in 1972 was partly driven by US
perception of China's concern at an imminent threat from Soviet imperialism.
Specifically, Nixon's opening to China was aimed more at forcing the USSR into
the US strategy of detente. In fact, China would have accepted Nixon's overture
even without a Soviet threat, as evidenced by the fact the Chinese attitude
towards the US remained positive even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
China was not naive enough to think the US would risk a nuclear exchange with
the USSR merely to save China from a nuclear attack by the USSR. Mao's vision
of US-China relations transcends fleeting geopolitical tactics of balance of
power, towards a long-range peaceful coexistence of two of the world's largest
nations.
China views itself is a natural member of what during the Cold War was called
the Third World, now generally known as developing countries, in the struggle
against Western imperialism, now known as neo-liberalism, but does not see
itself as the group's leader either by design or by default, as each country
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